


Brienne and the Christmas Calendar

by angel_deux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Advent calendars!, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brienne works for a Hallmark style network run by Varys!, Christmas fic!, F/M, It kind of takes place in westeros but they all celebrate christmas because i'm LAZY whatever, and at least once unnecessary plot twist!, ft Jaime Lannister's little spoon energy, oh my god they're roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21852679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Brienne writes scripts for a television network that exclusively produces shitty romance movies. That's not the ONLY reason she hates the Christmas season, but it's a pretty big part of it. Her roommate and best friend Jaime, on the other hand, is filled to the brim with holiday cheer.Or: Jaime does the whole Christmas Advent Calendar thing, and Brienne is oblivious.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 141
Kudos: 608





	Brienne and the Christmas Calendar

**Author's Note:**

> this is so much longer than it needs to be, and I don't know what it is, but here you go! I barely celebrate Christmas except for the "oo pretty lights and I like spending time with my family and also peppermint" part, but I figured I'd at least drop a little something for the holidays! I hope you enjoy and I hope it makes SOME semblance of sense lmao

When Brienne was sixteen, she fell madly in love with Renly Baratheon because he asked her to dance. It was at this _painfully_ tacky Winter Wonderland dance, somewhat swankier than the Homecoming Dance, somewhat less swanky than prom. Renly was a year older than her. Brienne knew him from their shared English class and because she was friendly with the girl he had dated earlier in the year, Margaery Tyrell. He found her standing on the edge of the dancefloor. He looked impossibly handsome, wearing black and gold and emerald green. He could see that she was crying, and he smiled at her.

“Don’t listen to them,” he said. Some boys had been teasing her. “You look lovely.”

They danced for three songs, and he was sweet and gallant and made her laugh, and afterwards Brienne went home blushing and dreaming of the future she was obviously going to enjoy as Mrs. Renly Baratheon.

Renly started dating Margaery’s brother Loras three days later. Turned out the whole Margaery thing had just been a cover until both boys were ready to come out.

So. Well. Brienne hasn’t had the best luck with romance. Or winter. Or Christmas.

It isn’t like it’s just that one experience. The Renly fiasco is just the first thing that gives her a bad taste in her mouth around the Christmas season. There are more. Her first boyfriend in college dumps her right before Christmas because he just “doesn’t see them making it through the holidays”, which Brienne’s roommate Sansa is convinced means he’s too lazy to think of a gift idea. She gets fired from her first gig writing textbooks a few days before the holidays, which Sansa ascribes to corporate greed and the company’s need to pay ridiculous bonuses to her bosses. Plus, her father is always bringing women to Christmas dinner. Women who are too young and who look at Brienne with frank confusion and disdain. He’s always so sure they’re the one that will stick, but by the time next Christmas rolls around, it’s a different woman participating in all the Tarth family traditions.

She’s not a _grinch_ about it. That isn’t Brienne’s style. She’s accommodating of everyone else’s Christmas cheer in the same way she’s accommodating of, say, Sansa’s swooning romanticism: it’s not _for_ her, but she understands that people need certain things to make them happy, and she’s not rude enough to try and dissuade them.

So she just… endures it. She smiles through it. It’s only inside that she hates it.

So of course she ends up working for fucking Varys.

Varys (just the one name, which is annoying enough _on its own_ without adding his entire personality into the mix) got his start as a talk show host, but he had the good business sense to leverage his popularity, and now he owns three networks. Brienne winds up working for the one that exclusively produces shitty romance movies for people, mostly women, who are probably doing ten other things at once and don’t realize how horrible the films are. Television films have come a long way since Brienne was a child, but that’s not to say they couldn’t do with a bit more tweaking. Every story is exactly the same. They hit the same beats. They always try to play some new hook, but the network’s requirements mean that the most unique plotlines have to be hammered down into something the average Westerosi is comfortable with, which means nothing interesting or remotely spicy. A woman who finds herself in some convoluted position where she has to choose between her dream job and a fiancé will compromise on the job and keep the fiancé. A woman who left town to try and make something of herself will always come back home and realise she wasn’t happy working for whatever _big city corporation_ she worked for. And always, _always_ , a cookie-cutter, cute-as-a-button actress will lament her inability to catch some generic man’s attention, like there are just packs of beautiful single women roving around, dying for bland men to take them on dates.

And the _Christmas_ ones. Oh, the Christmas ones are the worst. And Brienne is responsible for writing them.

* * *

“I just don’t understand why you keep working there if you hate it so much.”

Brienne rolls her eyes, though she knows Jaime can’t see her from his perch on the ladder above her. He’s affixing some tinsel to the top of the tree he insisted they _had_ to put up today, because he’s the worst. It’s still _November_.

“Not all of us have trust funds to fall back on,” she says. Jaime frowns down at her and then descends the ladder to grin cheekily at her.

“Of course you do. You have me! I’d take care of you.”

Brienne has perfected her poker face in the three years she has been Jaime’s friend and roommate. She has perfected it because she has _had_ to perfect it, because otherwise she would blush at every word he said.

He just always manages to make it sound so…flirty. If only it was on purpose.

* * *

When she first met Jaime Lannister, Brienne had been almost angry at how good looking he was. He was _actor_ good-looking. Model good-looking. And not in the generic V-Network actor kind of way, either. He had a sharp jaw and a perfect beard and hair that would probably be too long for one of her Christmas nightmare movies. _Too feminine_ , the network note would say. _He needs to be manlier_. Which, according to the V-Network decision-makers, meant hair that was just barely long enough to be swooping, stubble that emphasized ruggedness, and teeth that were almost migraine-inducing in their brightness.

One of the worst things about Jaime is that he isn’t even an actor or a model. He’s _never_ been an actor or a model. When she first met him, Jaime was a lawyer representing Sansa’s mother in some kind of legal battle against her sister about their father’s estate. He had been cold. Confident. She knew him. She knew a thousand men like him.

Except they kept running into each other after that, and he kept subverting her expectations. When he finally worked up the courage to quit his father’s law firm—a move aided significantly by the trust fund he had been left in his mother’s will—Brienne discovered just how little of Jaime was actually in the image she had crafted for him. He was tenacious about their friendship, and he didn’t seem put off by her blatant lack of trust. He teased her in a way that wasn’t quite mocking. He tried to make her smile. He tried to make her laugh. Before she quite understood what was happening, he was her best friend, and she was agreeing to move into his apartment when her own lease was up.

There are a lot of things about Jaime that are only really shitty because of how good they are. Like his face and his body and the fact that he comes back from runs more often than not with his t-shirt slung over his shoulder. His flirtiness, obviously. His smile. His laugh. The fact that money means almost nothing to him and the fact that he’s so generous with it that she knows his joke isn’t actually a joke; if she needed him to, he _would_ take care of her.

That’s all bad. But his absurd romantic nature and the fact that he’s _obsessed_ with Christmas are easily the two worst things about him.

Sometimes it’s genuinely as if he has stepped out of a film. A better-than-average romcom where the leading man actually has a personality and a backstory and some sad, personal connection to Christmas—it was Joanna Lannister’s favorite holiday, of course. The romcoms wouldn’t include the stuff about how he responds to slights against him by snapping back just as hard, or how he used to have a weirdly codependent relationship with his twin sister before they finally severed ties, or how his neediness is less a cute quirk and more a deeply engrained fear of abandonment from years of his family leaving him in the lurch when it was most important. They wouldn’t include the months he spent suicidal after losing his hand in the accident, or the way he tried to push her away afterward so she wouldn’t be caught up in his mess. They wouldn’t include his struggle through therapy and his slow recovery. Those are all the parts that make Jaime, and she loves them, but they wouldn’t _fit_ in a romcom, would they? Brienne is fiercely protective of his bad parts, actually. A romcom leading lady wouldn’t know how to deal with them, and Jaime is perfect as he is. He’s too good for whatever pretty blonde actress would be chosen to play his lead.

But that’s unfair. She’s being a grinch. Jaime deserves love more than anybody. He’s always so _yearning_ for it. When they first started rooming together and he was dating more, he was always so optimistic. It should have been more infuriating than it was endearing, but it wasn’t. Especially since he deflated so easily. The optimism puncturing and failing when something happened to ruin it. He just felt everything so intensely. The good and the bad.

Obviously she’s in love with him. Like… _obviously_.

“I need my job,” she says patiently. She doesn’t remind him that he will one day find some beautiful, adorable girl to marry and settle down with, and Brienne can’t exactly be living off his trust fund _then_. She’ll have to find her own place. She’ll have to find new friends without Jaime taking up so much of her time. No, their lives are already too intertwined as it is. She can’t make it worse by adding money. “Anyway, the Halloween bump usually gets me through the Christmas depression. It’s fine.”

“Of course,” Jaime says with a crooked, slightly disapproving smile. “Your favorite.”

Brienne’s biggest secret, her really deeply held one, the one that goes deeper than her stratospheric crush on her unattainable best friend, is this: she is still that sixteen year old girl dreaming of Renly Baratheon. She is still just as stupid and just as naive. She’s just better at shoving those feelings down deep where she can pretend she doesn’t have them.

It’s _easy_ to pretend to be cynical. It’s easy to write the Halloween films where the woman opens her heart too easily to some slick corporate lawyer and is nearly murdered for her troubles only to be saved by the neighbor or friend she didn’t realize was her true love all along. It’s so easy to make people laugh with her sneering annoyance of the boundless optimism and romance of the Christmas movies.

Sometimes, she’s glad the movies she writes are so universally terrible. If they were any better, she might actually have an emotional connection to them, and where would she be _then?_

* * *

After they’re done decorating _their_ tree, Jaime insists that they get some hot chocolates and go watch the tree lighting down at the park

“I really think it could help you,” he says, blowing into his hot chocolate. He’s all red-cheeked and adorable, with his stupid hair poking out from under a knit cap, a scarf wrapped around his neck. She made both of them for him last Christmas, and he started wearing them this year as soon as the first leaves changed color. She tries not to think about it.

“What would help me? Christmas cheer?” She infuses her question with all the sarcasm it deserves. Jaime laughs. It’s charming, especially when he hunches his shoulders against the cold. Fuck him.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” he says. “The Christmas spirit.”

“Ugh,” Brienne says, shoving him lightly with her shoulder. He smiles and tucks his chin down below his scarf.

“For your writing,” he clarifies. “Not in general. Just...you always hate it so much. It can’t be fun to write about.”

“None of it is, but it’s a _job_ ,” Brienne points out. “It doesn’t have to be fun. And the movies are objectively bad.”

“They don’t have to be!”

“Of course they do! They aren’t trying to make movies! They want simple scripts and they want catchy plots so they can write some snappy summary on whatever streaming service Varys is courting this year. They won’t take any risks, because they’re afraid of alienating anyone even slightly interesting. They’re appealing to the absolute middle demographic of Westeros.”

“But you’re writing them! And you’re a good writer!”

“Honestly, a good enough computer algorithm could do my job. It’s just a matter of time. The studio writes these things, Jaime. They change everything I try to do. It’s not worth fighting them on it.”

Jaime grumbles adorably and takes a bracing sip of his hot chocolate.

“All I’m saying is that it couldn’t hurt to have a little holiday cheer. You’re always so negative!”

“No, _I’m_ realistic. And you’re always so relentlessly positive. It’s exhausting.”

Jaime grins at her, because he knows she isn’t seriously annoyed. She was with him through the worst of his depression, and she knows how hard it was for him to get where he is today. She can’t begrudge him this optimism now, no matter how irritating it might be when she’s in a funk.

“You could just use a little positivity in your life,” he says. “You deserve it.”

“I have you, don’t I?” Brienne asks. “You’re positive enough for the both of us.”

Jaime smiles at her again, his cheeks pink and rosy, and _fuck_ , he’s just a lot to deal with. 

And it gets worse, because it’s Jaime, and it always does. They get to the tree lighting, and he not only squashes himself against her side but tucks his arm through hers like they’re in some regency film. He’s not wearing his prosthetic, either, which _also_ does something to her, because he mentioned a few weeks back that his therapist was trying to get him more comfortable going without it, after he confessed to hating it so much. It’s a good prosthetic, and it allows him a lot more mobility than his old one, but it’s just too tied up in his father and his sister and their treatment of him once he lost his hand.

“She told me to start leaving it off when I feel safe,” he had said, and she noticed that more and more he was leaving it off when he was with _her_ , and that…

“Ugh, Bronn,” he says suddenly, shifting closer, ducking his head close to hers. “Hopefully he won’t see us.”

“What’s _he_ doing here?” Brienne wonders. She cranes her neck to see Jaime’s sort-of friend sipping eggnog and eyeballing the women around the tree. “Oh, of _course_ he’s trying to pick someone up.”

“Don’t let him see you,” Jaime hisses.

“Why? Are you two in another fight? I can never keep track.”

“I just don’t want it ruined,” Jaime says plaintively.

“If he’s going to see me, he’s going to see me. I’m not ducking to avoid it.”

Jaime sighs witheringly and presses even closer. If he’s trying to be inconspicuous, he’s not doing a very good job of it. The only thing that draws the eye more than Brienne is Brienne with Jaime.

Even though it’s painful to her, and even though she wishes desperately that things were different, she can’t help but find it just a little bit funny when she thinks of what they look like together. What people must see when they look at the two of them, especially now. Jaime snuggled up close, Brienne stiff and uncomfortable. She can practically hear them thinking: _she should be falling over herself with gratitude that he’s with her instead of acting like such a dead fish._

She relaxes against his side, too conscious of her stiffness, and he grins up at her.

* * *

The thing about Jaime is that Jaime has always been _kind_. At his core, at the heart of him. But for years and years he worked for his family, and he gave them everything he had, and he allowed them to run his life. He’s worked hard to escape their influence, and he deserves every bit of softness and kindness and happiness that he has now. It makes him just a bit easier to put up with. He just _likes_ getting to be kind and getting to do sweet things for her and his brother and their friends. She thought at first that it was the obliviousness of wealth: the rich boy not understanding why people might be a bit insulted when he blithely offers to pay for everything. But then she realized he was just excited to have people for whom he can do nice things. When he was working for his father, that empathetic part of him had to be shoved down deep.

So when he makes this random offer to spend the entire Christmas season doing all those activities that the couples in movies constantly do with each other to “help her get some inspiration”, and then goes and overdoes it and turns it into a _thing_ , she’s not even slightly surprised. And she can’t really be irritated by it, though she wants to be. Jaime sees a problem she’s having, and that means that Jaime will try to solve it. She can’t exactly be annoyed with him for being _too_ good a friend.

* * *

He shows up on the first day of December with an enormous, shallow wooden house.

“What is _that_?” Brienne asks, moving aside to let him in. He’s carrying it and about a hundred shopping bags at once. He manages to maneuver it so he can drop all the bags on the couch, where they will no doubt stay for hours until he wants to play a game or watch a Christmas movie together and will have to reluctantly move them.

“It’s an advent calendar,” Jaime says. He lays it flat on the coffee table with a delicacy that’s rare for him, but it’s heavy enough that it makes a solid thunk anyway. “Don’t look in the bags!”

“Okay,” Brienne laughs. He shoos her back towards her room and makes her stay there for the next three minutes while he hustles back and forth to his own room, shouting an explanation as he goes.

“So I was watching some of your movies,” he starts. He ignores her loud, performative groan. “And my favorite recurring thing was the advent calendar! Mysterious, magical advent calendar shows up and somehow directs the events of the plot. Every day giving the lead actress a gift or a clue or _something_ to push her towards the man of her dreams or whatever the point is.”

“It’s always the man of her dreams,” Brienne mutters to herself. What else would it be? A dream job? A fulfilling friendship? But that might get in the way of her relationship with her husband-to-be, and they couldn’t have _that_.

“So I figured I’d have this made for us! Twenty-five days of Christmas activities!”

“You had that thing _made_? How much did that cost?”

“Irrelevant!” Jaime shouts back. “Okay, come out!”

She does, to find to her relief that the bags have been stowed away in Jaime’s room.

Jaime is standing by the coffee table, where the advent calendar has been stood up. He’s grinning proudly down at it as if _he_ made it, and when she enters, he turns the force of that smile on _her_ , instead. She keeps her eyes on the calendar. Jaime’s smile is like looking at the sun sometimes. Better to approach it indirectly.

“Where’d you get it made?” she asks. She has this uncomfortable, squirming dread pooling in her belly as she looks at it. It’s just so _much_. When he offered to do the whole ‘Christmas cheer’ thing with her, she’d expected a few activities, probably sprung on her spontaneously, because that was Jaime’s way. Not an organized, planned activity like this.

“Sansa’s cousin Jon has this friend Davos who does carpentry. At first I thought he couldn’t be a very _good_ carpenter, because he’s missing a few fingers, but he said he got those cut off by someone else.”

“Someone cut off his fingers? Was he in the _mafia_?”

“I don’t know. It’s not important. The important part is that he made this! Actually, he had the front part of the house in his shop already. It was an old doll’s house, I guess. And so he just made a box and a grid and cut the doors. He let me help a bit, but it was mostly him.”

“Jaime,” Brienne says, sort of helplessly, the way she always says it when he’s gone almost too far with something.

“It really wasn’t that much,” he deflects quickly, which is a lie. She sighs, but it’s just no _use_ with him. He doesn’t know how to be temperate with his friendship. It’s one of the reasons she loves him. It can just also be _overwhelming._

“All right,” she says. She knows that she’s going to spend a lot of this month faking enthusiasm, because she doesn’t want Jaime to realize just how little she wants to do any of this. He went through all this trouble, and if he wants to spend time with her all month when he could be hanging out with more excitable, holiday-cheer-inclined people, then she’s not going to take it away from him. She puts on a fake smile, glad when he seems relieved to see it. “How’s this going to work?”

“You open the little door with the ‘one’ over it,” he says. “And there’s a miniature inside. A representation of what we’re going to do that day. Every day there’s something. Small things on weekdays, bigger things on weekends.” He looks vaguely proud of having actually considered her schedule in all this.

“All right,” she says again. He hovers over her as she reaches for the calendar, his eyes almost comically large with anticipation. She opens it, this cute little door with a cute little doorknob and hinges, and she reveals a small, dollhouse-style mug of what looks like hot chocolate.

“We had hot chocolate at the tree lighting,” she points out. “Running out of ideas already?”

“No,” Jaime says, too close and too fond. “ _Today_ we’re going to that cafe you always say is too expensive, and I’m going to buy you whatever hot chocolate flavor you want, and then we’re going to walk along the river and talk about whatever you want to talk about.” He grins at her pointedly. He _does_ know her. Sometimes it’s a surprise to realize, because he seems so oblivious. But of course he knows that she’s going to think it’s an amazing idea.

* * *

The hot chocolate _is_ amazing, and the walk is pretty nice, too. It’s unseasonably warm, but Jaime is wearing his knitted gifts anyway, like he always does, and he keeps smiling happily into the sun like a golden retriever glad to be outside, and she is going to lose her mind before the month is out if it means spending this much time with his softest, most generous self. She’s weak for all incarnations of Jaime, but she’s especially weak for the Jaime who’s happy and sweet and just glad to still be alive. After a difficult few years, it’s always just… _a lot._

The following day, a string of tiny Christmas lights is tangled up behind the second door, and so Jaime takes her on an evening drive and then a cozy stroll through his old neighborhood. The mansions, of course, go all out for Christmas. There’s a cynical little voice inside her head that reminds her that the owners no doubt have paid workers to put up the displays for them, but that cynical little voice isn’t loud enough to drown out the childlike wonder she feels as she gazes with wide eyes up at the lights and decorations all around them. Jaime is particularly smug after that, and Brienne can’t blame him. It’s only the second day, and already she’s thinking of how she and her father used to decorate the big tree at their family home. He’d always let her put as many lights as she wanted, even though she always wanted too much, and their tree always looked absurd. How had she forgotten that?

Day three’s prize is a miniature plate of cookies, which means Jaime spends the day experimenting with baking while Brienne works from home. She’s working on next year’s Christmas scripts, and she has to admit that it’s working. Jaime’s plan, ridiculous as it seems, is making it suck just a little bit less to write the same drivel.

It helps that Jaime’s in front of her _as_ she’s writing it. Happily mixing batter with the electric mixer her father got him last year. Listening to Christmas music. Insisting in a very snotty rich kid voice that she’s going to _love_ the next batch. By the time she’s ready to pack it in, Jaime has a decorating station set up. His attempts at decorating are abysmal, but he makes sure she understands that he’s _always_ been artistically challenged, and that it isn’t just his missing hand. She laughs like it’s a joke, but she’s glad, actually. Last year around Christmas, he hadn’t been nearly this cheery.

Actually, all things considered, Brienne finds herself a bit _concerned_ about Jaime’s Christmas cheer. He’d been oddly withdrawn for a few weeks in November, saying only that he’d had some interesting revelations in therapy, and she had worried about a potential setback, but this swing in the opposite direction now seems almost suspicious. Too good to be true, maybe.

It’s just. She worries about Jaime. That’s what she does. She saw him at the worst of his post-accident recovery, and sometimes she thinks that _her_ therapist’s theory that she was traumatized by it is ridiculous, but then things like this happen, and she realizes that she’s terrified. She can’t watch him go through that again.

* * *

The next few days of Jaime’s surprises are tamer, since she actually has to be on set. The films for this year were produced in the summer, so now it’s just mostly last minute tweaks and some additional material for the website, which Brienne is for some reason expected to be involved with. Varys supervises, always wearing a Santa hat perched on his bald head. Not that Varys _actually_ gives a shit about all the Christmas stuff he’s peddling. No, Christmas makes money, and people will watch anything if the title has _Christmas_ or _Holiday_ or _Holly_ in the title. Some of Brienne’s coworkers take the whole thing seriously, but not Varys. She kind of likes that about him, actually.

Maybe it’s for that reason that Brienne finds herself telling him about Jaime’s advent calendar thing while they watch the filming of the promos. Varys sips some kind of peppermint mocha coffee while humming and tsking at various points.

“An awful lot of trouble to go through,” he says when Brienne is finished. His eyebrows are arched in a very TV Talk Show Host way; Varys, like most of the people Brienne has met from the entertainment world, never really knows how to turn it off.

“That’s just how Jaime is,” Brienne says.

“ _Now_ , at least,” Varys replies, because _right_ , he used to know Jaime, back when Jaime worked for his father.

“He’s different now,” Brienne says, though that’s not really what she believes.

“More like you’ve given him a safe place in which he feels like he’s finally allowed to be his authentic self,” Varys counters, which _was_ more like what she meant to say.

“I forgot you can do that,” she grumbles, and Varys smiles cryptically.

“I can,” he practically purrs, which Brienne hates. “Just…” He hesitates, and then a small, smug smile comes to his face. “No. Nevermind.”

“What?” She understands suddenly how Varys made his millions as a talk show host. “What is it? You think something’s wrong?”

“Are you in therapy?”

“Of course I’m in therapy. Everyone’s in therapy. Why?”

“I was just going to say you should work on assuming something’s _wrong_ when I’m clearly smiling and amused. We _are_ friendly enough, I hope, that you shouldn’t assume that I’m smiling at some misfortune about to befall you.”

And, well. Brienne feels her face grow red.

“I’m sorry,” she manages. “I do do that. Assume. It isn’t about you. I just…”

“It isn’t a bad thing,” Varys says gently. “But I’m not going to tell you my thoughts anyway. I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

* * *

For the next few days, Brienne watches Jaime carefully. The surprise? What had Varys meant by that? She tries not to read too into it, but it would be very _Jaime_ to fill their month with small, normal things and then do something huge and elaborate on the final day. Had Jaime enlisted Varys somehow? Or had Varys just assumed?

But Jaime is Jaime, and he acts perfectly like himself, if a bit perkier and happier and more infused with Christmas cheer. They go to dinner at this restaurant they both love, which gets everything decorated for Christmas and has a bunch of Christmas specials that Jaime insists they have to try. They go to the movies to see an actual _good_ Christmas movie. On a Friday, they make and try a bunch of mixed Christmas drinks that Jaime found recipes for online, most of which are _awful_ , but a few of which are nice.

Afterward, with both of them slightly more than buzzed, Jaime falls asleep with his head in Brienne’s lap while they watch some holiday cooking show, and Brienne strokes his hair and listens to his contented humming. The alcohol swims through her, leaving her soft and happy and open. She doesn’t worry that she’s touching Jaime too much. She doesn’t worry that Jaime’s going to _know._

It was so kind of him to think of doing this for her. She thinks of what Varys said, about how Jaime is allowed to be his true self with her. She thinks of his smile as he baked those cookies and his blithe happiness tonight as he navigated pouring their drinks with one hand, hardly ever stumbling anymore.

She rests her hand at last at the curve of his jaw, and she strokes her thumb along it, back and forth, catching on the stubble. He’s going through all this work for her, and she finds she actually _has_ been enjoying herself, and she…

She hasn’t gotten him _anything_ for Christmas yet.

* * *

“You’re not an asshole,” Sansa says to her as they wander through yet another store. “He’s tough to buy for. That’s why I always just take him to the spa for a day.”

“Well I can’t do that.”

“Why not? He’s one of the vainest men I know. He’d love two spa trips! Especially if you were with him.”

She smiles pointedly at Brienne, but Brienne pretends not to see it. All of their friends are irritating about she and Jaime, but Sansa’s the worst by far.

She balks, too, at the idea of being at a spa alone with Jaime. There’s a certain intimacy there that she doesn’t want to touch. It’s all right for Sansa, who has known Jaime _forever_ , and who is pretty and perfect just the way Jaime is. But it’s not all right for Brienne. She’s too…much. She’s too big, and too broad. What do people even do in spas? Sit around half-clothed in some misty wooden rooms, according to her pop culture knowledge. Are there hot tubs involved? Massages? Probably. No, that’s not for her.

Even just the idea of it…no. She’s been alone in a situation like that with Jaime before, and it hadn’t exactly been pleasant. She had found him nearly unconscious in the bath, shivering even in the warm water. It wasn’t long after he’d been released from the hospital the first time, and he had been hiding the infection on his stump, not wanting to go back. He had been unable to hide it after that. Brienne had finished bathing him, and then had literally carried him out of the apartment and drove him back to the hospital. At the time, it had been all panic and confusion, but thinking back on it was enough to make her blush. She had been as gentle with him as possible as he babbled and suffered, and she had _steadily_ ignored his obvious arousal, but it was something that still came to her in odd moments. His soft skin and his eyes on her, watching her as she cleaned the feverish sweat from his shoulders and face and hair.

A spa? A place where all that skin would be on display? No. Not in a thousand years. Not with _her_ skin there too. Her too-big frame and her too-long legs and her freckled, blotchy skin. No, they looked odd enough standing beside each other while they were fully clothed! She couldn’t endure it.

“No,” she says, trying not to sound as morose as she feels. “I should think of my own idea. He’s going through all this trouble.”

“This is just going to be your life now,” says Sansa’s sister Arya with a kind of savage glee. “The two of you making bigger and bigger gestures for each other until you’re growing a new fucking hand for him in a lab or something.”

“That would mean going back to school for a degree in hand regrowing,” Sansa points out. “And who has the money for _that_?”

* * *

In the end, Brienne _does_ find a pretty good replica of Jaime’s favorite Valyrian steel sword, Widow’s Wail, in one of those stores in the mall that only seems to sell swords, colorful scarves, and incense. There’s a sturdy shield to go along with it, and she commissions Arya to paint it with the Lannister sigil. Arya is generally too chaotic to trust with something like that, but she and Jaime have the same irreverent sense of humor. If the shield _does_ come back with the lion sporting a prominent penis or goofy moustache, Jaime will probably think it’s funny.

It still doesn’t feel quite right, but she doesn’t know what else Jaime might want! He’s rich enough and has little enough self-control that he usually just buys himself whatever thing catches his fancy. And he’s one of those people who always says “nothing! Just spending time with you is enough” when you ask him what he wants, which is the least helpful answer of all time.

When she finally gets back to the apartment, Jaime isn’t home, so she has time to stash her gifts for him in her closet and then work a bit on her script. It’s a particularly torturous one where a female lawyer returns home for Christmas in “the country” and reconnects with the boy who broke her heart in high school by never responding to the love letter she sent him the day before graduation. Of course it turns out the amalgam of mean girl stereotypes who was cruel to the leading lady in high school stole the letter in order to take her _own_ shot with the leading man. And now she and the leading man are seemingly happily dating despite the fact that she’s never anything but horrid to him.

The girls are always meaner in these films than they have been in Brienne’s experience. There were plenty of cruel girls in high school, but the boys tended to be worse.

Even the meanest woman Brienne knows—Jaime’s twin sister Cersei—isn’t so catty. She’s savage and brutal and cruel, but not in the kind of way that these V-Network girls are, where their whole _purpose_ is meanness. Cersei’s mean because she’s ruthless and used to being shot down and wants to make sure she doesn’t get shut out of her father’s approval, since it took her a lifetime to earn it. What’s Selyse’s motivation? Brienne can’t figure it out. And it doesn’t matter! Brienne could write Selyse a rich backstory and provide some explanation for her actions, but it would be cut in favor of a scene where the love interest asks the leading lady’s father permission to court her, like it’s the fucking dark ages.

Brienne is in a foul mood by the time Jaime comes home, which he seems to anticipate somehow—perhaps because shopping and working on these scripts are her two least favorite things—and he’s already carrying takeout.

“Movie night,” he says, rather smugly. Brienne almost points out that they technically got drunk and watched movies _last_ night, but she swallows it. Jaime’s the last person who deserves her poor mood. She opens the right day on her advent calendar and laughs at the tiny mock DVDs of some Christmas classics, and laughs harder when Jaime dips into his room and returns with the full-sized versions.

* * *

Watching movies with Jaime is generally pretty torturous, because nothing gets him feeling snuggly like some takeout, a few drinks, and a film. Brienne always knows she’s in trouble when he breaks out the fluffy blanket he usually keeps folded on the end of his bed, and tonight he fetches it as soon as she’s cleared their trash from the takeout.

“Now,” he says, very sagely, as he sits down and spreads the blanket across their laps. “I know we usually do this the other way around, but we’re supposed to be doing research for your movies, and that just won’t do it.”

“What are you on about?” Brienne asks. She can’t keep the fondness out of her voice.

“Well I’m the man, obviously. You have to snuggle up to _me_ for once. Men don’t snuggle in V-Network movies.”

“Oh, but you love it,” Brienne laughs, and Jaime gives a self-sacrificial sigh.

“I do,” he laments. “But it’s the _point_ of all this, so I’m willing to fall on my own sword here a bit.”

Brienne feels safe holding Jaime. She feels safe because it’s _him_ who wants comfort, and she knows that she’s able to give it. She feels safe because he seeks out her warmth and because he feels safe with her, and that makes those butterflies in her stomach into happy, satiated butterflies. Not rampant, not terrifying not like this. She lays her head on the pillow in his lap, and she doesn’t feel safe at all. The blanket is pulled up over her shoulders, but she’s not comfortable. Her legs dangle over the edge of the arm of the couch, for one thing. But mostly it’s just…how does he not realize? How does he not know? If she lets her guard down, if she drapes herself over him the way he does to her, he’ll _know_.

Men like Jaime…model-like men, charming and rakish and fun and brash and sarcastic, they are _allowed_ to be like that. Snuggly and catlike and constantly seeking affection. They are allowed to be anything they want. He had been allowed to be a slick corporate lawyer, and now he’s allowed to be the polar opposite of that, and either way he’s _fine_. He’s allowed!

Women like Brienne are _not_ allowed. They aren’t allowed to take up space. They aren’t allowed to be affectionate. They aren’t allowed to try and look nice, or try and shrink themselves and hide away, or try and make themselves bigger and taller. There are women out there who can be themselves unapologetically and not follow any of the rules, but Brienne has never been one of them, and it makes her stomach sick to lay with her head in Jaime’s lap and endure his hand trailing through her hair like she’s the kind of woman who is _allowed_ to be treated like she’s small and soft and delicate. She isn’t! She is built for the bottom of every pyramid. She is the sturdy, practical weight on which her friends can rest. She is strong. She is not soft. Or she can’t let that softness show, at least. It will break her if it gets out.

But Jaime goes on happily petting her hair, and she lets him.

* * *

When she wakes up, Jaime’s asleep too. Reclined back against the couch, his hand tucked against her chest, where she had apparently grabbed it in her sleep. How embarrassing. She releases it and sits up slowly, trying not to wake him, but of course she does. He smiles at her sleepily.

“Only two movies,” he says. “We were too comfy, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Brienne whispers back.

“Come on, go back to sleep,” Jaime says. He has managed to uncontort himself and lie down along the couch, leaving no room for her except in front of him. She shakes her head and starts to stand, but he reaches out to grab her hand with his maimed arm, and she sees his face tighten with the effort of neutrality when he realizes.

He forgets sometimes. But only when he’s truly comfortable and happy. She hates when that happens.

She lies down in front of him. It’s not a completely tight fit, but it’s tight enough that she feels ridiculous. Jaime doesn’t seem to notice. _It’s a Wonderful Life_ is still playing in the background. He tucks his stump around her waist after a hesitation that she can’t help but notice. She covers it gently with her hand. _It’s okay_ , she wants to say. Jaime kisses her hair in response.

* * *

The problem, she decides, is that she and Jaime are too much in each other’s lives.

She’s not exactly sure what the solution to that is, but there’s got to be something. This isn’t sustainable. He’s going to start dating again. He’s going to realize that he spends too much time with her. He’s going to get bored of her. _Something_. And if she lets herself fall into this trap of believing it, she’s going to get herself hurt.

Every day is some new horrible thing that she finds herself enjoying while she’s doing it, but then _loathing_ when she’s safely at home and in bed, thinking it over. They take a horse drawn carriage ride through the park. They go absolutely nuts at a craft store and decorate the entire apartment. They hand-paint each other ornaments. They spend a Saturday at the Christmas fair.

Brienne tries to keep her head about it. She really does. She knows that he’s just Jaime, and she knows that this is just what he does. He’s a good friend. And it’s working! Her writing is easier. Her scripts are less terrible. They’ll get destroyed in the editing room, but at least she feels better about them and can actually produce them. Varys is pleased with her, her manager is pleased with her. _Jaime_ is pleased with her, and that’s the most difficult part of all, because his is the approval that means the most, and she desperately wishes it wasn’t.

_It’s too much_ , she thinks, all the time. _It’s too much._

* * *

Then, the Saturday before Christmas, she opens the door on her cursed advent calendar, and it’s a pair of ice skates. Her stomach sinks.

It’s not something she’s proud of. And it’s not something she will _ever_ admit to anyone. But she has always found ice skating to be inherently romantic, _even_ when in a V-network movie. There’s always this scene where the lead girl falls into the lead man’s arms, or where she does a perfect twirl and impresses him, or where they have to hold hands because one of them is bad at skating. Brienne has never been that girl, the kind of girl who goes out places with people she’s interested in, so she doesn’t know what it would really be like to skate with someone, but she’s just always _liked_ it. There’s always snow falling in those scenes, and it’s always so beautiful. Everyone is so happy.

She cannot go ice skating with Jaime.

But she _does_. She goes, because this means a lot to him, clearly, and because she wants him to be happy, and because the squirming little romantic gremlin inside her is thinking ‘you may as well lean into all this, since it’s the only time you’re going to experience it with anyone, even if it’s all fake’.

Jaime’s a bit unsteady to start, which he insists is a lack of balance due to his missing hand, and she laughs loudly enough at the first joke that he _keeps_ making it, making her laugh every time.

Jaime gets surer on his feet the more they skate, but he still holds on to her hand and spins lazily with her on the ice. Snow _does_ start to fall; of course it does. Everyone leaves the ice eventually as it gets colder and later, and then it’s just she and Jaime, under the lights.

Everything about him is in hyper-focus. His eyelashes and the way his hair pokes out from under his knit cap. The way his eyes crinkle at the corners because he can’t stop smiling. The way he looks at her. This is what they feel, those beautiful girls in all those movies Brienne writes. This is the fluttering feeling of anticipation. She always finds it so irritating in her movies when the lead is genuinely surprised by the kisses that follow moments like this. How could they not see it coming? Brienne would. She can almost feel it coming now. If Jaime was going to kiss her, this would be the time to do it. Music would swell. The way he’s looking at her, it would be leading into it now. He’s smiling, and he pulls her in, leads her closer to him. He’s pulled her close enough that his head is tilted just slightly back to keep her eyeline.

_It would be now_ , she thinks. Jaime’s biting his lower lip, maddeningly. _He would kiss me now._

Jaime startles suddenly, as if he has heard her thought, and he releases her hand, and he skates away, calling after her to follow him. A weight settles in on her chest. It isn’t his fault. It isn’t his fault. He doesn’t know.

It’s humiliating anyway; for a moment, she actually thought he would.

* * *

So yes. Maybe it _is_ better that they take some time away from each other. This month has been fascinating and wonderful and illuminating, and she has enjoyed spending so much time with him. But all it has really done is remind her exactly why she’s been in love with Jaime for so long, and it doesn’t _help_.

She works on her scripts. She sends them off. Varys compliments her work, which he never does. Even if it’s a bit of an internal disaster, at least Jaime was right. It _did_ help her get into the Christmas spirit. He’s a good friend. A good friend, and she should stop being so fucking greedy and wanting more.

* * *

Tyrion showing up provides the perfect opportunity.

Jaime is startled and clearly a bit angry when his little brother invades their apartment on Christmas Eve while they’re settling onto the couch to watch some _more_ Christmas movies. They’ve already done the activity for the day—hung up the stockings and exchanged their first gifts (each of them got silly pajama pants for the other, which is the kind of coincidence that Jaime _loves_ and won’t shut up about). It promises to be an easy afternoon and evening, and Brienne is only mildly worried about what tomorrow’s Christmas Surprise might be; she’s half-convinced Jaime’s going to try to pity-kiss her, because that’s _always_ how the movies end.

Tyrion doesn’t even knock. He never does. Just bursts in and says, “pack a bag. You’re coming with me.”

“What? Get out of my home,” Jaime says, leaping up as if Tyrion has caught them in some kind of compromising position. He tries to look threatening, but he’s wearing pajama pants with Christmas-outfit-wearing dogs on them, and he’s wearing a Santa hat himself. It’s not an overtly threatening look.

“You’ll want to wear something a bit nicer than that,” Tyrion says snidely.

“I’m not going.”

“You _are_. You need to be there. Uncle Kevan is going, and that means Lancel, _and_ our only decent aunt _isn’t_ , which means I’ll have no one to drink and jape with. So you’re coming.”

“Where?” Brienne asks from the couch.

“Nowhere,” Jaime barks.

“The Lannister family Christmas gala,” Tyrion supplies. “Cersei’s bringing her new beau. He was wearing _leather pants_ when Bronn picked them up at the airport.”

“I thought Bronn and Cersei hated each other,” Brienne muses.

“I’m not going!” Jaime announces to the apartment at large. “I hate it. Father will ask me a lot of uncomfortable questions. Lancel will insist on _several_ sayings of grace. Everyone will politely pretend not to notice when I knock over a wine glass with my prosthetic. No. it’s bloody awful.”

“Brienne can come too,” Tyrion suggests. “If Cersei’s bringing a fucking _Greyjoy_ , I think father will allow us to slum with a Tarth. No offense.”

“I’m well aware of what your father thinks of me,” Brienne drawls. Jaime’s frowning at her, trying to puzzle it out. _Good_. If Tywin hasn’t told him about their very tense showdown at Jaime’s bedside in the hospital, then she’s not going to be the one to tell him.

“Yes, that’s why you’re perfect,” Tyrion says. “He won’t know which of us to hate more! My date used to be an exotic dancer! It’ll be stiff competition.”

“If Greyjoy wears those leather pants, it’ll probably be Greyjoy,” Brienne points out, which makes Tyrion laugh. Jaime’s frowning at them both, almost _comically_ put out.

“I’m still not going,” he says. “And neither is Brienne.”

“Jaime, please,” Tyrion says. “I never ask you for anything.”

“The fact that you can say that with a straight face is _shocking_.”

“Well. Fine. But I rarely ask you for things. I’m begging you.”

“You should go,” Brienne says. She’s surprised _herself_ at the suggestion, but not more surprised than Jaime and Tyrion. Both brothers look at her. Tyrion with gratitude. Jaime, weirdly, with _hurt_.

“What?” he asks.

“It’s your family,” Brienne points out.

“ _You’re_ my family,” Jaime insists. Brienne cannot help the traitorous little flutter of her heart to hear it, but she’s _not_. She’s not his family, and she needs to remember that. She’s his friend. She’s his roommate. For right now, they are what matters to each other. But it won’t be forever. That’s the whole _problem_.

“Yes, but…Tyrion,” she says awkwardly. “He’s asking quite nicely, for him.”

“I am,” Tyrion chirps up. “Come on, pack your things. It’s just for a few nights!”

“What about the calendar?” Jaime asks, gesturing to it, currently leaning against the wall beside the television.

“Oh, seven hells. A fucking advent calendar. Seriously?” Tyrion mutters. “It’s custom-made, isn’t it? I know it is. Don’t answer me.”

“We can do it when you’re back,” Brienne says. She tries to smile and look uncomplicatedly pleased about it. Maybe, if she’s lucky, he’ll tell the whole Christmas Surprise plan to Tyrion and Tyrion will let him know why kissing her might be a bad idea. If there’s anyone who will take pity on Brienne, it’s Tyrion.

“When _we’re_ back,” Jaime says. “If I’m going, you’re going.”

“I’ve got Christmas dinner with my father tomorrow night, remember? I can’t.”

“I’ll drive you back tomorrow early,” Jaime says. “The perfect excuse to leave!”

“Jaime, seriously, it’s _fine_ ,” Brienne says. Her mouth hurts from smiling so widely and for so long. “You should be with your family on Christmas.”

Jaime opens his mouth. Closes it again. Frowns.

* * *

He _does_ end up going. Thank the gods. She’s sure for a few moments that he’ll refuse, and he sulks his way through packing his bag while Tyrion and Brienne make aimless smalltalk. She swallows the lump in her throat when she gets up to hug both of them. She kisses Jaime on the cheek.

“Merry Christmas,” she says to him, and he smiles at her. A bit deflated.

“I’ll see you in a few days?” he says, like it’s a question.

“Of course,” she says.

He goes.

She tries not to wallow too much, because she’s the one who insisted he go. If she had insisted he stay, he would have done that. He would have sat with her on the couch and watched these movies, and he would have done whatever fool thing he thought she needed him to do tomorrow morning.

She watches a few movies without him. She answers the few texts he sends her, mostly sad faced emojis. After a few hours go by, his texts return to his usual drama, bemoaning his choice to listen to her and talking nonstop about how he wishes he hadn’t. She falls asleep on the couch smiling, and then wakes up to a single text: “I already miss you”.

_I already miss you too_ , she thinks, but she knows she’ll miss him more when this is all over.

* * *

She decides to head to her father’s place early, because she’s got nothing better to do and because she doesn’t want to feel the lack of Jaime like this, so acutely and so pathetically. He texts her throughout the day, little observations about his family. Cersei’s new boyfriend is, unsurprisingly, terrible. She’s still glad he went. He misses his family, though he hates to admit it.

Before she goes, she glances back at the advent calendar. That 25th door haunting her. She doesn’t want to open it, but she thinks of that text. _I miss you too_ , she thinks again. She needs to prepare herself. Because whatever it is…

She reaches down and opens the door before she can talk herself out of it, and inside is a folded piece of paper. _Brienne_ is written across the front in Jaime’s too-large, awkward, left-handed scrawl. She almost leaves it there, unopened, but she can’t. Her greedy fingers pull at it, open it.

It’s blank. There’s nothing inside. She almost laughs. She folds the paper back up. She puts it back inside. She feels better.

_He’ll tell me how much he appreciates me_ , she decides. That will be it. It’s so _Jaime_. Maybe he _has_ written her a letter. She looks towards his room, but she can’t bring herself to go in. No, it won’t be anything very terrible. She was expecting mistletoe or some kind of indication that he means to pretend this is romantic until the end. But it’s just Jaime. The letter will be sappy and cheesy and maybe just a bit maudlin, the way he gets sometimes. It’ll be hard to listen to, because it’ll sound so much like romance that she’ll want to believe it, and because he’ll look so beautiful and earnest saying it. He’ll read every line with that look he gets sometimes, where, his eyes get so soft and wanting. She won’t believe it, though. She’s prepared.

* * *

At her father’s, she’s introduced to her father’s new girlfriend, who’s nicer than the last few have been, and actually age-appropriate, which is a nice surprise. They cook dinner together, and Selwyn explains all the family inside jokes, which Brienne doesn’t really mind, for once. It’s been so long since her mother died. It’s nice to feel like there’s someone who might actually stick around.

“So tell me about the advent calendar,” Selwyn says abruptly during dinner, which takes some of that charitable feeling and sends it shooting off into space. Brienne sighs. She can’t even remember telling him about it, but of course she must have, off-handedly.

So she finds herself explaining it. She doesn’t like exposing herself this way to this new woman who doesn’t _know_ her. Brienne does like her. She’s funny and sweet and a bit bawdy in a way that seems like a good contrast to her father’s taciturn nature. But she’s still basically a stranger! She’s the last person Brienne wants to explain her pathetic lack of a love life to.

But…Jaime has been texting her all through dinner, and she knows that tomorrow when he comes home he’ll give her that letter or read her that speech or whatever that folded paper was supposed to represent. And he really _is_ a good friend. The best friend she’s ever had. So she tells this random woman all about it. How she was feeling stuck and depressed at her job. How Jaime came up with the plan to help her out. How he had the advent calendar made because there are so many advent calendars in those fucking V-Network movies.

“He’s just a really good friend,” she says, because she can see the way the older woman’s eyes are lighting up with amusement.

“A really good friend, is it? You can’t be serious. Obviously, he’s in love with you.”

“No, no. I didn’t explain it right.”

“You explained it _exactly_ right. He was looking for a way to confess his feelings, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.”

“No, not Jaime. Jaime’s…he’s like a _model_. He’s, he’s so attractive, and he…”

“Doesn’t care about any of that! Sweetheart, take it from someone who knows a thing or two about it. He’s in love with you. Denying it isn’t going to change anything. It’s just going to convince him that _you_ aren’t interested.”

Brienne doesn’t _want_ to get angry with her father’s new girlfriend. She really doesn’t. She swallows back her impatience and her annoyance. The defensive refusal to engage. She would think that this woman was making fun of her, but she doesn’t even think it’s that. It’s just that it makes _sense_ , from the outside, to think that Jaime’s doing this out of some attempt at wooing her.

“Jaime’s just not like other people,” she finally says. “This is how he shows his affections.”

She’s hoping that’s the end of it, but she gets a roll of the eyes in return. A small laugh. Brienne can’t decide if she’s insulted or not.

“Your father didn’t tell you, did he?”

“Tell me what?”

“My maiden name.” She cackles at Brienne’s confused expression and Selwyn’s mumbled excuses. “I _married_ a Frey. But my birth name was Genna Lannister. Sweetheart, Jaime is my nephew. My _favorite_ nephew, though you should keep that to yourself. Your father and I met at the hospital last year, when we both went to visit Jaime at the same time. I assumed you knew.”

Selwyn smiles sheepishly when both women turn semi-accusing looks in his direction.

“I thought…I’m sorry, you’re _the_ Genna? Aunt Genna? Tyrion’s drinking buddy?”

“Well, I like to think I’m more than that, but it’s nice that the little imp refers to me fondly, at least.”

“I didn’t…I didn’t realize.”

“Well, clearly not, or you wouldn’t be trying to explain the nature of my nephew to me. You’re right, though. Jaime’s not like anybody else. Certainly not like anybody in our family. His father always _hated_ to hear that, but I’ve never had any reason to think I’m wrong. I know my nephew almost as well as I know the contents of those _awful_ movies your network produces.” She leans forward, smiling sharply, in a way so Lannister that Brienne is horrified she didn’t notice it before. “And he’s in love with you, Brienne.”

* * *

She finds some way to avoid really addressing it. She’s hardly sure how, after. She can’t remember what she says. It sits inside her. Fermenting. Going sour and cold and…no. She’s wrong. Who cares if she’s Jaime’s aunt? Brienne knows how the world works. She knows that model-good-looking men like Jaime Lannister make good friends for ugly girls like her, because they’re “safe”, because there’s an implied line in the sand. It only looks like love from the outside because people like Genna Frey and people like Sansa Stark watch too many movies and end up believing in the shit those movies try to sell.

But no. That isn’t the way the world works. Men like Jaime can’t ever look past the outside shells of women like Brienne Tarth, and they don’t fall in love with women like Brienne Tarth. That just doesn’t happen.

She wishes it did! She wishes she was wrong. She isn’t.

She heads home late that night. Everyone’s Christmas lights are up, and she remembers the nervous way Jaime took her hand when they were walking in his old neighborhood to look at the lights. The way he had smiled at her, how it was almost _shy_.

If he was any other man. If it was any other woman. She would think…

She gets home and half expects to find him waiting for her, standing by the advent calendar sheepishly. But he isn’t, of course. He’s with his family. His beautiful, wealthy family. That’s where he belongs.

She cleans the apartment, in the way she only does when she’s particularly stressed out about something. She stares at the closed door to Jaime’s room several times. It would be so easy to put these thoughts to rest. She just has to find the letter.

But no. No. She isn’t that person. She curls up on the couch with some more holiday cooking shows.

_Did you know my dad’s dating your Aunt Genna???_ she asks in text, but she falls asleep long before she gets an answer.

* * *

She wakes to the sound of the door opening, and she squints at the cable box to see that it’s two in the morning. She half sits up, turning to glare at Jaime as he tries to tiptoe into the kitchen. He’s got his stupid knitted scarf and hat, and there are snowflakes on the crimson yarn.

“Did you drive back here in the _snow_?” she blurts. Jaime startles, nearly dropping the pile of foil-wrapped plates he’s carrying.

“Yes, shut up. It’s Christmas.”

“It’s not,” Brienne points out. “It’s two in the morning.” He frowns deeper. He piles the plates in the fridge haphazardly. Stealing leftovers for them is such a Jaime thing to do. It warms Brienne’s heart just a bit, though she’s still annoyed. She wraps herself in her blanket and goes to the window behind the TV. The snow is coming down hard, and her stomach clenches. “ _Jaime_ ,” she says.

“It was Christmas when I left,” Jaime says. She turns to look at him, and he’s shaking out his hair as he hangs his hat on the peg beside the door.

“It took you more than two hours to get home?”

“Three,” Jaime admits sheepishly. He looks _nervous_. She can’t stop staring at him. “I didn’t think it would be so bad.”

“Jaime,” she says again. Like a broken record. _Why_? she wants to ask. She doesn’t. She shakes her head at him, her mouth agape.

“Genna called me,” he says. Blurts, like he’s trying but can’t keep it in. He’s shaking his head. “She told me about what happened at your Christmas dinner, and I needed to explain.”

Brienne sighs. Her heart clenches miserably. She wants to go back to sleep and forget this happened.

“Jaime, you don’t need to explain anything,” she says. “She was just…she said it herself. She watches too many V-Network movies. I know she wasn’t…” She tries to think of some more elegant way to say it. She can’t. “She wasn’t _right_.”

“ _What_?” Jaime asks. He storms closer, his expression falling open. “Of _course_ she was right. Of course I’m in love with you. Shut up.”

“ _Shut up_?”

“How can you really not… _everyone_ knows. Brienne, _everyone_ knows. Tyrion and Sansa and Catelyn and all of them. Of course Aunt Genna was right! I only ever see her when I’m at family functions and drinking! I never stop talking about you!” She’s staring at him. It’s literally just…not registering. Her brain trying to process it. It doesn’t make _sense_.

“That’s not how this works,” she manages. Jaime smiles. Exasperated and fond and _Jaime_ , and he’s looking at her like…

“This isn’t one of those movies you hate,” he says, somehow understanding. Of _course_ he knows what she was going to say. He’s Jaime. He always somehow knows. “This isn’t like that. I love you. I do. None of the rest of it matters.”

“Of course it _matters_ ,” she says, but he doesn’t back down. He’s moving closer to her. He’s found confidence somewhere that he didn’t have before, and she keeps thinking _it’s a trick. It’s part of the game. He doesn’t mean it_ , but he’s looking at her, and…

She _knows_ him. That’s the part that’s tripping her up so badly. She knows him, and she knows exactly who he is. He wouldn’t push her this far for a trick. Not even an innocent one. He _knows_ about Renly. He knows about her college boyfriend. He knows that she’s cynical for a _reason_ and not just because Christmas cheer is too much for her. He knows her as well as she knows him, and he knows that she would never forgive him if this was a trick.

“It doesn’t,” he says. “It doesn’t matter. Do you love me? If you love me, it doesn’t matter.”

“Jaime,” she starts. She wants to back away. She doesn’t. He’s looking up at her, close enough to need to tilt his head back. She’s taller than him. Her face is too plain. His sharp jaw and his stubble and his golden hair are all glittering and perfect against the fairy lights hung up on the windows, and she can’t…

“Are you in love with me too?” he prompts again. He doesn’t look anxious yet.

“Yes,” she says, because she knows he will get anxious soon, and she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want him to think…

He smiles. It’s proud. Blissful. A bit smug. It’s Jaime, and he loves her.

“Oh,” he says. “Good.”

He grips the collar of her shirt in his hand, and he brings himself up on his toes to press his lips to hers. She finds herself backing against the back of the couch, holding onto him, her arms around his shoulders as he kisses her senseless. It’s not like any kiss she’s had before. There’s something thrilling and forbidden about it, like she shouldn’t, like it’s something she’s stealing even though he’s the one who made the move. When he breaks away, he’s grinning at her. He somehow looks even _more_ smug than he already had.

She finds her voice enough to ask, “was this _really_ your plan? Winning me over with a Christmas calendar?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“It didn’t _work_. You telling me you loved me worked. That’s all you had to do.”

He laughs loudly, and she shushes him, because it’s two in the morning and they have _neighbors_. He leans in even closer. His hand is on her shoulder, and his arm goes around her waist. He’s touching her, touching her the way he does when they’re on the couch and he’s particularly soft. Has he really wanted to be this close all this time? She still feels like she can’t touch him, but she brushes his hair back from his face anyway, and she sees the way he shivers with it.

“I was _trying_ ,” he says gently. “To make a gesture so obvious that even _you_ couldn’t misinterpret it.”

“If you had kissed me as part of the calendar, I would have thought you were trying to be a nice friend.”

“You’re awful. You’re unbelievable.” He’s still looking up at her like she’s everything. “I was so sure of myself.”

“You always are,” she points out. He laughs, and he leans in, and he rests his forehead against her chest for a heartbeat, helpless.

“No,” he says, pulling back to look at her. “I’m really not. You just always think that. I don’t know where you got that idea.”

Brienne does. She got it from years of men, beautiful men, men not nearly as beautiful as Jaime, treating her like an impossibly hideous sore on the surface of the world. She got it because men like him are meant to be cold and brash and sarcastic and cruel. They are not meant to be kind. They are not meant to be anxious.

“I really need to quit my job,” she decides, and he smiles at her wider. “I don’t think it’s doing me any favors.”

“You think you would have noticed my obvious pining if you didn’t work at such a toxic place?” he asks.

“No. But I wouldn’t have been as blind, maybe. If everyone else can see it…”

“ _Everyone_ else,” Jaime confirms.

“Maybe I need to work someplace that won’t make me feel like…I don’t know. Like I don’t deserve this. Just because of how I look. And how you look.”

“I love you,” he says, and he kisses her again. “I never thought I’d hear you actually admit it.”

“Neither did I,” she says. “What was in the letter?”

“What letter?”

“The Christmas door. It had a blank piece of paper.”

“Oh, I didn’t write a letter.” Jaime’s grinning. “I was still sort of…trying to come up with something. I was probably going to improvise.”

“Gods, you’re lucky your aunt got there first.”

“I know,” Jaime says. “Is she _seriously_ dating your father?”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ll forgive her _only_ because she solved this. Are you really going to quit your job?”

“I’ll need some time to find something else, but yes.”

“I told you. I’ll take care of you.”

His eyes are lit up, sparkling, hopeful. It’s two in the morning and he just drove three hours in the snow because he wanted to be here with her, and because he loves her.

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she says. She’s still touching him softly, just so he knows. So there’s not any chance that he doesn’t. “But it means the world that you would.”

It is somehow exactly right, and Jaime smiles wider. He’s still standing just in front of her. He isn’t Renly Baratheon. She isn’t sixteen. There’s no mistake or understanding. There’s no sappy Christmas music soundtrack, either. She’s still ugly, and he’s still too beautiful for her, and it doesn’t _matter._ She told him that she loves him, and it’s (kind of still) Christmas, and it’s snowing, and somehow nothing terrible is happening. Somehow, he’s still with her, and he’s looking at her like he never wants to leave.


End file.
